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A state of the north-central United States. It was admitted as the 19th state in 1816. The area was controlled by France until 1763 and by Great Britain until 1783. The Indiana Territory was formed in 1800. Indianapolis is the capital and the largest city. Population: 6,350,000.
Indianan In'di·an'an or In'di·an'i·an adj. & n.
For more information on Indiana, visit Britannica.com.
Indiana, often called "the crossroads of America," was a center of commerce even before the arrival of European explorers in the 1670s. Bounded on the north by Lake Michigan and on the south by the Ohio River, the state's several important rivers and portages made it a strategic military location as well. The dominant Indian tribe in the region, the Miamis, lived throughout the state from the early 1600s. They were joined by bands of Shawnee and Delaware Indians in the southern part of the state and by groups of Delaware, Potawatomi, Piankashaw, and Wea in the north. By 1700, the Miamis had settled in several villages throughout the region, including large villages at Kekionga (present-day Fort Wayne), Ouiatanon (near present-day Lafayette), Vincennes, and Vermillion. In 1679, led by the French explorer Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the first Europeans reached the region. Eager to establish outposts for the fur trade, the French laid claim to the area and erected military forts at Kekionga (known as Fort Miami, possibly as early as the late 1680s and permanently after 1704), Ouiatanon (1719), and Vincennes (1732). Although they had survived primarily as an agricultural people, the tribes eagerly entered into the fur trade, especially after epidemics from smallpox, measles, and other diseases decimated their numbers and made farming more difficult. By the 1750s, only about 2,000 Indians of various tribes survived in the region.
During the French and Indian War, French claims over the territory were ceded to the British, a concession ratified by the Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763. British rule over the region was brief, however. In 1778 and 1779, during the American Revolution, forces led by George Rogers Clark controlled the area after capturing Vincennes. After the Revolution, the United States took possession of the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River in another Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783. The United States reorganized the region under the Ordinance of 1787, recognizing it as the Northwest Territory the following year. In July 1800, the region was divided into an eastern section that later became the state of Ohio and a western section that extended to the Mississippi River on the west and up to Canada in the north. Known as the Indiana Territory, a name that reflected it as "the land of the Indians," the territory later was divided even further to create the Michigan Territory (January 1805) and the Illinois Territory (February 1809). Thus, by 1809, the boundaries of present-day Indiana were secure.
Beginning with the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ceded a portion of eastern Indiana to the United States, federal authorities gradually purchased land from various Indian tribes through the 1830s. The governor of the territory, William Henry Harrison, signed the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809 with the Delawares, Potawatomis, and Miamis, adding the southern third of the territory to federal reserves; other agreements, including the Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) and the Treaty of Wabash (1826), completed the transfer of land from Indian hands. In the meantime, however, major conflicts occurred, most notably with Harrison's victory over Indian forces led by Tenskwatawa (also known as the Prophet) at Tippecanoe in 1811. During the War of 1812, British and Indian forces combined to fight American troops throughout the territory. The last major battle was between Miami and American forces and took place on the Mississinewa River on 17 and 18 December 1812; the battle concluded with the Miamis' defeat.
Early Statehood
With the opening of U.S. land offices at Vincennes (1804), Jeffersonville (1807), Terre Haute (1817), and Brookville (1819), almost 2.5 million acres of Indiana land were sold to speculators and settlers through 1820. Later, additional offices opened at Fort Wayne (1822), Craw-fordsville (1823), and La Porte (1833). With the territory's population reaching 24,520 in 1810, agitation for state-hood gained momentum, and on 11 December 1816, Indiana was admitted to the Union as the nineteenth state. The location of its first capital, Corydon, in south-central Indiana reflected the fact that the overwhelming majority of the state's population resided close to its border with the Ohio River. On 7 June 1820, the capital was relocated to Indianapolis, a site chosen for its location in the geographical center of the state.
In its first decade as a state, Indiana's population surged as migrants from the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia bought newly opened federal lands; later, arrivals from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York joined them. Although slavery was prohibited by the 1816 state constitution, other legal restrictions kept some African Americans from settling in Indiana. By 1830, just over 1 percent of the state's 343,031 inhabitants was African American, a figure that remained steady until well after the Civil War. A surge in the number of foreign-born immigrants, particularly German-speaking arrivals to central and southern Indiana, contributed to well over 5 percent of the state's population after 1850.
With land well suited to farming and raising livestock throughout the state, most of the newcomers settled into agricultural pursuits. Early attempts at industrial concerns included furniture making, farm implement production, and food processing. However, small-town life characterized Indiana throughout the nineteenth century; even up to 1850, the state's largest city, the Ohio River town of New Albany, held no more than 8,181 residents. While the towns of Indiana remained important trading centers for commercial farmers, the state's cultural fabric was constructed by thousands of small family farms. At the end of the antebellum era, more than 91 percent of Indiana residents lived in rural areas. From the predominance of its small-town character, the appellation "Hoosier" was affectionately bestowed upon Indiana's residents from the 1820s onward. Although many folkloric explanations have been given for the term, one of the most likely is that it came from the employment of Indiana canal workers by the Kentucky contractor Samuel Hoosier. The workers became known as "Hoosiers," and the name soon became generalized to describe all Indianians.
Although only a few minor engagements of the Civil War touched Indiana soil, the state's unity was tested by its commitment to the Union's cause. With so many recent migrants from southern states, support for the Confederacy ran high during the conflict's early days. However, a majority of residents—especially antislavery Quaker migrants from the Carolinas who came to the state in the 1810s and 1820s—eventually made the state a stalwart supporter of the Union. After the war, political allegiance shifted back once again, and the state remained roughly divided between the Democratic and Republican parties, a trait it retained through succeeding generations.
While Indiana engaged in the internal improvement craze of the 1840s with heavy state investment in canal building, the state's geographic importance between the agricultural centers of the Midwest and the markets of the East became more apparent after the Civil War. While the Ohio River trade favored the growth of Evansville and New Albany in the first half of the nineteenth century, railroads covered central and northern Indiana by the 1880s. Indianapolis and Terre Haute ranked as major rail centers. The latter city witnessed the formation of the American Railway Union by Eugene V. Debs in 1893, one of the first labor unions of industrial workers in the United States. Rail traffic also spurred commercial and manufacturing growth throughout the state. In 1852, the Studebaker brothers founded a blacksmith shop that made South Bend the site of the largest wagon works after the Civil War; the company would produce automobiles under the Studebaker name in the northern Indiana city until 1963. Another city, Muncie, gained fame as the site of the Ball Brothers Company; relocated to Indiana from New York in 1886, the factory immediately became the leading producer of glass jars and canning instruments in the United States. The most dramatic urban development, however, occurred in the northwestern corner of the state. Founded and built largely to serve the U.S. Steel Corporation's mills, the city of Gary grew from its inception in 1907 to have over 100,000 residents by 1940. The refineries of the Standard Oil Company in Whiting, opened in 1889, along with numerous other major steel and metal works throughout the area made northwest Indiana's Calumet region the most heavily industrialized in the state.
Like many state capitals, Indianapolis owed most of its early growth to its status as a center of government. Located on the White River, with insufficient depth to allow commercial navigation, the city had to wait until the railroad era to take advantage of its strategic location in the center of the state. Although hampered by a lack of natural resources in the immediate area, Indianapolis eventually developed a diverse manufacturing base to supplement its role as a center of government and commerce.
Hoosier Values
Even as the state edged into urbanism, it retained much of the small-town values from its early days. As explored by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd in their classic sociological study of Muncie, Middletown: A Study in ModernAmerican Culture (1929), typical Hoosiers valued consensus and conformity, even as they embraced modern conveniences at home and at work. Although Middle-town's residents respected differences in religion and politics, they were suspicious of beliefs deemed foreign or strange. The source of both the state's strength and weakness, these dichotomous characteristics were the basis for some of the best literary works produced by Indiana writers, including native sons such as Booth Tarkington, James Whitcomb Riley, and Theodore Dreiser.
Increasingly, the white, Anglo-Saxon character of small-town Hoosier life became more heterogeneous in the twentieth century. In 1920, a bare majority of the state's almost three million residents lived in urban areas. Foreign-born residents represented over 5 percent of the population; the Great Migration of African Americans northward after World War I increased their presence to almost 3 percent. These demographic changes, along with a conservative reaction to the spread of Jazz Age culture in the 1920s, fueled a rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. The state became the midwestern center of the organization in the 1920s. Under the banner of patriotism, combined with directives against Roman Catholics, the foreign-born, and African Americans, the Klan attracted upwards of 300,000 Hoosier members by 1923 in urban and rural areas alike. By the following year, Klan-endorsed candidates controlled the Indiana legislature and the governor's office as well. Only in 1925, after the conviction of Klan leader D. C. Stephenson for murder and rape, did the organization relinquish its hold on Indiana politics. A 1928 Pulitzer Prize–winning campaign by the Indianapolis Times against the Klan finally purged it from legitimate political circles.
Industrial Strength
Aside from the conservative politics of the decade, the driving force in Hoosier life was the state's continuing industrialization that linked it firmly with the national economy, especially the automobile industry. By the end of the 1920s, steel production was the state's largest industry, with automobile and auto parts manufacturing and electrical component production ranked just behind it. Most northern and central Indiana cities were tied to the auto industry with at least one automobile or parts production factory employing their citizens, while the Calumet cities continued to expand their steel output. To the south, Evansville became a major center of refrigeration unit production. The state's natural resources also continued to make Indiana a center of limestone, sand, and coal output, particularly throughout the southern part of the state.
Given the economy's growing dependence on durable goods manufacturing by 1930, the onset of the Great Depression hit the state hard. Industrial employment plunged to almost half its pre-Depression level by 1932, as employers such as U.S. Steel, which had doubled its production capacity in the 1920s, shut down. In the midst of New Deal attempts to revive the economy, Hoosier workers responded with a number of organizational efforts to form labor unions. A sit-down strike at Anderson's Guide Lamp factory in 1936 and 1937 led by the United Auto Workers (UAW) was a pivotal action in forcing General Motors to recognize the right of workers to collectively bargain through their unions. Anderson became a bastion of UAW support in politics and society, while Evansville witnessed the rise of the United Electrical Workers and the Calumet region, the United Steel Workers. As it had been since the 1890s, the United Mine Workers remained a strong force in the lives of thousands of Hoosiers in the coal mining towns of southern Indiana.
Spurred on by lucrative federal contracts to industrial employers during World War II, the state's emphasis on manufacturing investment continued into the postwar era. By 1958, over 40 percent of the state's total earnings came from the manufacturing sector, a rate that far outpaced the national average. Even as the national economy moved away from durable goods manufacturing, Indiana remained a bastion of manufacturing strength: in 1981, the national economy derived less than 17 percent of its earnings from durable goods production, while in Indiana, the rate was over 31 percent. Although the manufacturing sector provided many Hoosiers with high-wage jobs and advantageous benefits, the state's dependence on the industrial sector came under criticism during the recession from 1979 to 1982. With prohibitively high interest rates and energy prices, many industrial corporations failed to reinvest in new technology and equipment; as a result, many of the so-called "smokestack industries" lost their competitive advantage during the recession. About one-quarter of the employees in the durable goods sector lost their jobs in Indiana, and unemployment rates in Muncie and Anderson topped 18 percent in 1982.
While those without a college degree had previously obtained high-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector, public leaders were concerned that the state's economy might not provide such opportunities in the future. Calls for greater access to Indiana's system of higher education prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the Purdue University and Indiana University systems had expanded greatly with branch campuses around the state after World War II, in 1990 the college attendance rate of 37 percent continued to trail the national average of 45 percent. Indiana also ranked low on the number of college graduates who completed their degrees and remained in the state's workforce.
As it emerged from the recession of the early 1980s, Indiana's manufacturing base contributed to the recovery and the state remained one of the top five producers of aircraft engines and parts, truck and bus bodies, steel, surgical supplies, and pharmaceuticals. In 1999, manufacturing jobs made up 23.4 percent of nonfarm employment. While the overall number of manufacturing jobs in Indiana increased throughout the 1990s, the service sector became the single largest provider of nonagricultural jobs, with a 24.3 percent share. Agricultural production, once a mainstay of the state's development, represented just 1.8 percent of Indiana's economic output in 1997. In Indianapolis, the Eli Lilly Company, making products from insulin to Prozac, ranked as the state's largest corporation, with global sales approaching $11 billion in 2000. Overall, the Hoosier economy was the nation's eighteenth largest in 1997; with 27 percent of its manufacturing workforce making products for export, Indiana ranked fifteenth in the nation as an exporting state.
At the millennium, Indiana had 6,080,485 inhabitants, making it the nation's fourteenth most populous state. African Americans comprised the state's largest minority group, with 8.4 percent of the total population; 87.5 percent of Hoosiers identified themselves as white. Indianapolis had a population of more than 750,000 people, but no other city other than Fort Wayne had more than 200,000 residents. Indeed, Indiana's reputation remained rooted in a small-town, Hoosier identity. Steve Tesich's portrait of town-and-gown relations in Bloomington, the subject of the coming-of-age movie Breaking Away (1979), won an Academy Award for best screenplay. Hammond resident Jean Shepherd's wry reminiscences of the 1940s served as the basis for the movie A Christmas Story (1983). The movie Hoosiers (1986), based on the basketball team from the town of Milan that won the state championship in the 1950s, also thrilled audiences who rooted for the underdog team. Few other states follow high school and college sports teams so avidly. Basketball remains the top Hoosier pasttime, and Indianapolis waged a successful campaign to become the home of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1999. The NCAA Hall of Champions museum, along with the annual five-hundred-mile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, has added to the city's popularity as a tourist destination.
While the ascendancy of Dan Quayle to vice president in 1988 led some observers to herald a period of Republican dominance in the state, Indiana voters remained steadfastly centrist in their habits. The Indiana legislature typically was evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. After a twenty-year run of Republican governors, the Democrat Evan Bayh in 1989 began the first of two terms as governor. In 1998, Bayh went on to the U.S. Senate in a landslide victory with 63 percent of the vote. He was replaced by another Democrat, Frank O'Bannon, who in 2000 won another term in office with 57 percent of the vote. Like Bayh, the state's senior senator, Republican Richard Lugar, was regarded as a political centrist, holding conservative views on fiscal matters while avoiding stridency on foreign relations or public policy issues. Avoiding the political extremes, both senators embodied the central values of their Hoosier constituents.
Bibliography
Cayton, Andrew R. L. Frontier Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Critchlow, Donald T. Studebaker: The Life and Death of an American Corporation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Lynd, Robert S., and Helen Merrell Lynd. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929.
Madison, James H. The Indiana Way: A State History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
———, ed. Heart Land: Comparative Histories of the Midwestern States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Nelson, Daniel. Farm and Factory: Workers in the Midwest, 1880–1990. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Facts and Figures
Area, 36,291 sq mi (93,994 sq km). Pop. (2000) 6,080,485, a 9.7% increase since the 1990 census. Capital and largest city, Indianapolis. Statehood, Dec. 11, 1816 (19th state). Highest pt., 1,257 ft (383 m), Wayne co.; lowest pt., Ohio River, 320 ft (98 m). Nickname, Hoosier State. Motto, Crossroads of America. State bird, cardinal. State flower, peony. State tree, tulip poplar. Abbr., Ind.; IN
Geography
Northern Indiana is a glaciated lake area, separated by the Wabash River from the central agricultural plain, which is rich with deep glacial drift. The southern portion of the state is a succession of bottomlands interspersed with knolls and ridges, gorges and valleys. Limestone caves, such as the big Wyandotte Cave, and mineral springs, as at French Lick and West Baden Springs, are found there. The unglaciated soil is shallow in S Indiana, and the cutting of timber has caused erosion, but there is still extensive farming.
The capital and largest city is Indianapolis, in the central part of the state. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, with a 3-mi (4.8-km) frontage on Lake Michigan, is noted for its beautiful shifting sand dunes. Formerly a state park, the area was made a National Lakeshore in 1966. Four years earlier, in 1962, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in S Indiana. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the site of the famous 500-mi (800-km) auto race, held annually.
Economy
Although Indiana is primarily a manufacturing state, about three quarters of the land is utilized for agriculture. With a growing season of about 170 days and an average rainfall of 40 in. (102 cm) per year, Indiana farms have rich yields. Grain crops, mainly corn and wheat, are important and also support livestock and dairying industries. Soybeans and hay are also principal crops, and popcorn and widely varied vegetables and fruits are also produced. Hogs, eggs, and cattle are also important. Meatpacking is chief among the many industries related to agriculture. Although the urban population exceeds the rural, many towns are primarily service centers for agricultural communities.
There are, however, cities with varied heavy industries; prominent, besides Indianapolis, are Evansville, Fort Wayne, Gary, Kokomo, South Bend, and Terre Haute. These cities were among the highest in the nation in unemployment during the recession of the early 1980s. Indiana's leading manufactures are iron and steel, electrical equipment, transportation equipment, nonelectrical machinery, chemicals, food products, and fabricated metals. Rich mineral deposits of coal and stone (the S central Indiana area is the nation's leading producer of building limestone) have encouraged construction and industry.
Throughout the state the products of farms and factories are transported by truck and by train. Indiana calls itself the crossroads of America, and its extreme northwest corner—where transportation lines head east after converging on nearby Chicago from all directions—is one of the most heavily traveled areas in the world in terms of rail, road, and air traffic. Waterborne traffic is also important; improvements on the Ohio River and the opening (1959) of the St. Lawrence Seaway have benefited the state. With the opening in 1970 of the Burns Waterway Harbor on Lake Michigan, Indiana gained its first public port and enhanced its shipping facilities.
Government, Politics, and Higher Education
Indiana's constitution dates from 1851 and provides for an elected executive and legislature. A governor serves as the chief executive for a term of four years. The legislature, called the general assembly, has a senate with 50 members and a house of representatives with 100 members. Indiana elects 10 representatives and 2 senators to the U.S. Congress and has 12 electoral votes.
During the 20th cent. Indiana has been generally conservative and Republican, although Democrats have had some successes in gubernatorial and congressional elections. Evan Bayh, elected governor in 1988 and 1992, was succeeded by another Democrat, Frank O'Bannon, elected in 1996 and reelected in 2000. Lt. Gov. Joseph E. Kernan, also a Democrat, succeeded O'Bannon when the latter died in 2003, but Kernan lost to Republican Mitch Daniels in 2004.
Among the institutions of higher learning in Indiana are Indiana Univ., at Bloomington; Purdue Univ., at West Lafayette; the Univ. of Notre Dame, near South Bend; Indiana Univ./Purdue Univ. at Indianapolis (IUPUI); Indiana State Univ., at Terre Haute; DePauw Univ., at Greencastle; Butler Univ., at Indianapolis; Valparaiso Univ., at Valparaiso; Wabash College, at Crawfordsville; Earlham College, at Richmond; and Goshen College, at Goshen.
History
From the Mound Builders to Tippecanoe
The Mound Builders were Indiana's earliest known inhabitants, and the remains of their culture have been found along Indiana's rivers and bottomlands. The region was first explored by Europeans, notably the French, in the late 17th cent. The leading French explorer was Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, who came to the area in 1679. At the time of exploration, the area was occupied mainly by Native American groups of the Miami, Delaware, and Potawatamie descents. Vincennes, the first permanent settlement, was fortified in 1732, but for the first half of the 1700s, most of the settlers in the area were Jesuit missionaries or fur traders.
By the Treaty of Paris of 1763 ending the French and Indian Wars, Indiana, then part of the area known as the Old Northwest, passed from French to British control. Along with the rest of the Old Northwest, Indiana was united with Canada under the Quebec Act of 1774 (see Intolerable Acts). During the American Revolution an expedition led by George Rogers Clark captured, lost, and then recaptured Vincennes from the British. By the Treaty of Paris of 1783 ending the Revolutionary War, Great Britain ceded the Old Northwest to the United States.
Indiana was still largely unsettled when the Northwest Territory, of which it formed a part, was established in 1787. Native Americans in the territory resisted settlement, but Gen. Anthony Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers in 1794 effectively ended Native American resistance in the Old Northwest. U.S. forces led by Gen. William Henry Harrison also defeated the Native American forces in the battle of Tippecanoe (1811) in the Wabash country.
Indiana Territory and Statehood
In 1800, Indiana Territory was formed and included the states of Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and parts of Michigan and Minnesota. Vincennes was made the capital, which in 1813 was moved to Corydon. A constitutional convention met in 1816, and Indiana achieved statehood. Jonathan Jennings, an opponent of slavery, was elected governor. Indianapolis was laid out as the state capital, and the executive moved there in 1824–25.
Indiana was the site of several experimental communities in the early 19th cent., notably the Rappite (1815) and Owenite (1825) settlements at New Harmony. In the 1840s the Wabash and Erie Canal opened between Lafayette and Toledo, Ohio, giving Indiana a water route via Lake Erie to eastern markets. Also in the 1840s the state's first railroad line was completed between Indianapolis and Madison. The Hoosier spirit of simplicity and forthrightness that developed during Indiana's early years of statehood figured in the writings of Edward Eggleston in The Hoosier Schoolmaster and was represented in much later days by James Whitcomb Riley, George Ade, Gene Stratton Porter, and also in the nostalgic lyric by Paul Dresser (brother of Indiana-born novelist Theodore Dreiser) for the song “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away.”
The Civil War and Its Aftermath
The Civil War brought great changes in the state. In the elections of 1860, Indiana voted for Lincoln, who had spent his boyhood in the Hoosier state. Although there was some proslavery sentiment in Indiana, represented by the Knights of the Golden Circle, Oliver P. Morton, governor during the war, held the state unswervingly to the Union cause even after constitutional government broke down in 1862. General John Hunt Morgan led a Confederate raid into Indiana in 1863, but otherwise little action occurred in the state.
Manufacturing, which had been stimulated in Indiana by the needs of the war, developed rapidly after the war. Factories sprang up, and the old rustic pattern was broken. However, Indiana's farmers continued to be an important force in the state, and in the hard times following the Panic of 1873 indebted farmers expressed their discontent by supporting the Granger movement and later the Greenback party in 1876 and the Populist party in the 1890s.
Industrialization and the Labor Movement
Industrial development came to the Calumet region along Indiana's Lake Michigan shoreline in the late 19th cent. Marshy wastelands were drained and transformed into an area supporting a complex of factories and oil refineries. As the 19th cent. drew to a close, industry continued to expand and the growing numbers of industrial workers in the state sought to organize through labor unions. Eugene V. Debs, one of the great early labor leaders, was from Indiana, and the labor movement at Gary in the Calumet area figured prominently in the nationwide steel strike just after World War I. Indiana was an early leader in the production of automobiles. Before Detroit took control of the industry in the 1920s, Indiana boasted over 300 automobile companies.
Indiana society in the first half of the 20th cent. has been described in a number of studies and books. The classic sociological study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd of an American manufacturing town, Middletown (1929), was based on data from Muncie, Ind. Midwestern life and American boyhood were portrayed realistically, and often with humor and optimism, in the novels of Booth Tarkington. Another Indiana author, Theodore Dreiser, wrote more generally of American society in a changing age. In the 1930s and 1940s, Wendell Willkie and Ernie Pyle, both natives of Indiana, became nationally prominent figures in politics and journalism, respectively.
Although Indiana in the latter half of the 19th cent. was regarded as a “swing state” electorally, it has generally been conservative throughout the 1900s. Republican J. Danforth “Dan” Quayle, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980 and 1986, was elected vice president of the United States in 1988. From the 1980s through the mid-1990s, the northern industrial portion of the state experienced a period of significant decline, along with the rest of the midwestern “rust belt.” However, the area around Indianapolis experienced significant growth with a diversified economy.
Bibliography
See H. H. Peckham, Indiana, a History (1978); J. S. Blue, Hoosier Wit & Wisdom (1985); E. E. Lyon and L. Dillon, Indiana: The American Heartland (1986); J. H. Madison, The Indiana Way (1986); R. M. Taylor, Jr., et al., Indiana: A New Historical Guide (1989).
State in the midwestern United States bordered by Michigan to the north, Ohio to the east, Kentucky to the south, and Illinois to the west. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis.
Local Time: Jul 19, 5:08 PM
Local Time: Jul 19, 4:08 PM
Grapes were first planted in this Midwest state in the late 1700s and it became one of the 10 largest grape-producing states in the early to mid-1800s. Vineyard diseases destroyed most of the vines in the mid- to late 1800s, and it wasn't until the Small Winery Act passed in the early 1970s that a rebirth took place. Today Indianapolis hosts the annual Indy International Wine Competition, one of the largest U.S. Wine competitions outside of California. Currently there are just over twenty-five wineries in the state. A majority of the wines here are made from hybrid grapes like aurora, catawba, seyval blanc, vidal blanc andvignoles there are a large number of fruit wines produced. vitis vinifera grapes like cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay are being planted, particularly near Bloomington and Milan. Some wineries still purchase crushed grapes from areas like California and make the wine at their facility. Areas around the Ohio River are part of the ohio river valley ava which also includes parts of kentucky, ohio and west virginia.
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| The State of Indiana | |||||||||||
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| Official language(s) | English | ||||||||||
| Capital | Indianapolis (785,597) | ||||||||||
| Largest city | Indianapolis (785,597) | ||||||||||
| Area | Ranked 38th | ||||||||||
| - Total | 36,418 sq mi (94,321 km²) |
||||||||||
| - Width | 140 miles (225 km) | ||||||||||
| - Length | 270 miles (435 km) | ||||||||||
| - % water | 1.5 | ||||||||||
| - Latitude | 37° 46′ N to 41° 46′ N | ||||||||||
| - Longitude | 84° 47′ W to 88° 6′ W | ||||||||||
| Population | Ranked 15th | ||||||||||
| - Total (2000) | 6,080,485 | ||||||||||
| - Density | 169.5/sq mi 65.46/km² (16th) |
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| Elevation | |||||||||||
| - Highest point | Hoosier Hill[1] 1,257 ft (383 m) |
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| - Mean | 689 ft (210 m) | ||||||||||
| - Lowest point | Ohio River[1] 320 ft (98 m) |
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| Admission to Union | December 11, 1816 (19th) | ||||||||||
| Governor | Mitch Daniels (R) | ||||||||||
| U.S. Senators | Evan Bayh (D) |
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| Congressional Delegation | List | ||||||||||
| Time zones | |||||||||||
| - 80 counties | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 | ||||||||||
| - 12 counties in Evansville and Gary Metro Areas | Central: UTC-6/-5 | ||||||||||
| Abbreviations | IN US-IN | ||||||||||
| Web site | www.in.gov | ||||||||||
The State of Indiana (IPA: /ˌɪndiˈænə/) is the 19th U.S. state and is located in the
midwestern region of the
Indiana is a diverse state with a few large urban areas and a number of smaller industrial cities. It is known for the Indianapolis 500 automobile race, held annually over the Memorial Day weekend, and a strong basketball tradition, often called Hoosier Hysteria.
Residents of Indiana are called Hoosiers. There are several ideas about the origin of the name. Linguists have traced it to England, where in one dialect it meant "farmer." Others have traced it to the Indiana workers who crossed the Ohio River to work for Sam Hoosier during construction of the Louisville and Portland Canal; these workers were known as "Hoosier's Men." Another story told to Indiana youths is that in the early 1800s, bar fights would break out in Indiana saloons, with many a man losing an ear. Someone would pick it up and ask "Whose ear?", which somehow evolved into Hoosier.
The state's name means "Land of the Indians" and Angel Mounds State Historic Site, one of the best preserved prehistoric Native American sites in the United States, can be found in southern Indiana near Evansville.[3]
Indiana is bounded on the north by Lake Michigan and the state of Michigan; on the east by Ohio; on the south by Kentucky, with which it shares the Ohio River as a border; and on the west by Illinois. Indiana is one of the Great Lakes states.
The northern boundary of the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois was originally defined to be a latitudinal line drawn through the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan. Since such a line would not provide Indiana with usable frontage on the lake, its northern border was shifted ten miles (16 km) north. The northern borders of Ohio and Illinois were also shifted from this original plan.[4]
The 475 mile (764 km) long Wabash River bisects the state from northeast to southwest and has given Indiana a few theme songs, On the Banks of the Wabash, The Wabash Cannonball and Back Home Again, In Indiana.[5][6] The Wabash is also the longest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi; miles ( km) from the Huntington dam to the Ohio River. The White River (a tributary of the Wabash, which is a tributary of the Ohio) zigzags through central Indiana.
There are 24 Indiana state parks, nine man-made reservoirs, and hundreds of lakes in the state. Areas under the control and protection of the National Park Service or the United States Forest Service include:[7]
The northwest corner of the state is part of the Chicago metropolitan area and has nearly one million residents.[8] Gary, and the cities and towns that make up the northern half of Lake, Porter, and La Porte Counties bordering on Lake Michigan, are effectively commuter suburbs of Chicago. Porter and Lake counties are commonly referred to as "The Calumet Region", or "The Region" for short. The name comes from the fact that the Grand Calumet and Little Calumet rivers run through the area. These counties are all in the Central Time Zone along with Chicago. NICTD owns and operates the South Shore Line, a commuter rail line that runs electric-powered trains between South Bend and Chicago.[9] Sand dunes and heavy industry share the shoreline of Lake Michigan in northern Indiana.
The Kankakee River, which winds through northern Indiana, serves somewhat as a demarcating line between suburban northwest Indiana and the rest of the state.[10]
The South Bend metropolitan area, in north central Indiana, is the center of commerce in the region better known as Michiana. Fort Wayne, the state's second largest city, is located in the northeastern part of the state.
The state capital, Indianapolis, is situated in the central portion of the state. It is intersected by numerous Interstates and U.S. highways, giving the state its motto as "The Crossroads of America".[11] Other cities and towns located within the area include Anderson, Bloomington, Carmel, Columbus, Crawfordsville, Danville, Fishers, Franklin, Greenwood, Greenfield, Kokomo, Lafayette, Lebanon, Mooresville, Muncie, Richmond, Terre Haute, and West Lafayette.
Rural areas in the central portion of the state are typically composed of a patchwork of fields and forested areas.
Evansville, the third largest city in Indiana, is located in the southwestern corner of the state. It is located in a tri-state area that includes Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky. The southeastern cities of Clarksville, Jeffersonville, and New Albany are part of the Louisville metropolitan area. Vincennes, the oldest city in the state, is located on the Wabash River.
Southern Indiana is a mixture of farmland and forest. The Hoosier National Forest is a 200,000 acre (80,900 ha) nature preserve in south central Indiana. Southern Indiana's topography is more varied than that in the north and generally contains more hills and geographic variation than the northern portion, such as the "Knobs," a series of ft ( m). hills that run parallel to the Ohio River in south-central Indiana. Brown County is well-known for its hills covered with colorful autumn foliage, T.S. Eliot's former home, and Nashville, the county seat and shopping destination.
The limestone geology of Southern Indiana has created numerous caves and one of the largest limestone quarry regions in the
USA. Many of Indiana's official buildings, such as the State capitol building, the downtown monuments, the Indiana University
School of Law in Indianapolis, many buildings at Indiana University in Bloomington, and the Indiana Government Center are all
examples of Indiana architecture made with Indiana limestone. Indiana limestone has also been used in many other famous
structures in the US, such as the University of Illinois'
Memorial Stadium, the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, and the
For sixty years, from 1890 to 1950, the United States Census found the center of population to lie in southern Indiana.
Most of Indiana has a humid continental climate (Koppen climate classification Dfa), with hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. The extreme southern portions of the state border on a humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa) with somewhat milder winters. Summertime maximum temperatures average around 85 °F (29 °C) with cooler nights around 60 °F (16 °C). Winters are a little more variable, but generally cool to cold temperatures with all but the northern part of the state averaging above freezing for the maximum January temperature, and the minimum temperature below 20 °F (-8 °C) for most of the state.[13]The state receives a good amount of precipitation, 40 inches (1,000 mm) annually statewide, in all four seasons, with March through August being slightly wetter.
The state does have its share of severe weather, both winter storms and thunderstorms. While generally not receiving as much snow as some states farther north, the state does have occasional blizzards, some due to lake effect snow. The state averages around 40-50 days of thunderstorms per year, with March and April being the period of most severe storms. While not considered part of Tornado Alley, Indiana is the Great Lakes state which is most vulnerable to tornadic activity. In fact, three of the most severe tornado outbreaks in U.S. history affected Indiana, the Tri-State Tornado of 1925, the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965 and the Super Outbreak of 1974. The Evansville Tornado of November 2005 killed 25 people, 20 people in Vanderburgh County and 5 in Warrick County.
| Monthly Normal High and Low Temperatures for Largest Indiana Cities | ||||||||||||
| City | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evansville | 40/23 | 45/26 | 56/35 | 67/44 | 77/54 | 86/64 | 89/68 | 86/64 | 81/57 | 70/45 | 56/36 | 44/27 |
| Fort Wayne | 31/16 | 35/19 | 47/29 | 60/38 | 72/49 | 81/59 | 84/62 | 82/60 | 75/53 | 63/42 | 48/33 | 36/22 |
| Indianapolis | 34/18 | 40/22 | 51/32 | 63/41 | 74/52 | 82/61 | 86/65 | 84/63 | 77/55 | 66/44 | 52/34 | 39/24 |
| South Bend | 31/16 | 36/19 | 47/28 | 59/38 | 71/48 | 80/58 | 83/63 | 81/61 | 74/53 | 62/42 | 48/33 | 36/22 |
| Source: US Travel Weather[14] | ||||||||||||
The area of Indiana has been settled since before the development of the Hopewell culture (ca. 100–400 CE).[15] It was part of the Mississippian culture from roughly the year 1000 up to 1400.[16] The specific Native American tribes that inhabited this territory at that time were primarily the Miami and the Shawnee.[17] The area was claimed for New France in the 17th century, handed over to the Kingdom of Great Britain as part of the settlement at the end of the French and Indian War, given to the United States after the American Revolution, soon after which it became part of the Northwest Territory, then the Indiana Territory, and joined the Union in 1816 as the 19th state. See Northwest Indian War.[17]
On June 29, 1816, Indiana adopted a constitution, and on December 11, 1816, became the 19th State to join the Union.[18]
Indiana filled up from the Ohio River north. Migration, mostly from Kentucky and Ohio, was so rapid that by 1820 the population was 147,176, and by 1830 the sales of public lands for the previous decade reached 3,588,000 acres (5,600 sq mi; 14,500 km²) and the population was 343,031. It had more than doubled since 1820. The first state capital was in the southern Indiana city of Corydon.[19]
Down the Mississippi and its tributaries (the Ohio and Wabash) was to be found the sole outlet for the increasing produce of the Middle West, whose waters drained into the great valley. Districts which were not upon streams navigable by even the lightest draught steamboat were economically handicapped. The small, flat boat was their main reliance. Roads suitable for heavy carriage were few up to the middle of the century. The expense and time attending shipment of merchandise from the east at that time were almost prohibitive. To meet this condition, the building of canals (espoused by the constitution of 1816) was long advocated, in emulation of Ohio which took example after New York State. In 1826, Congress granted a strip two and a half miles wide on each side of the proposed canal. A very extensive and ambitious scale of main and lateral canals and turnpikes was advocated in consequence.
Work began on the Wabash and Erie Canal in 1832, on the Whitewater Canal in 1836, on the Central in 1837. Bad financing and "bad times" nearly wrecked the whole scheme; yet, the Wabash and Erie Canal was completed from Toledo to Evansville. It was a great factor in the development of the state, although it brought heavy loss upon the bondholders with the advent of the railroad. Upon completion, the canal actually increased prices of farm products three or fourfold and reduced prices of household needs 60%, a tremendous stimulus to agricultural development. By 1840, the population of the upper Wabash Valley had increased from 12,000 to 270,000. The canal boat that hauled loads of grain east came back loaded with immigrants. In 1846, it is estimated that over thirty families settled every day in the state.
Manufacturing also developed rapidly. In the ten years between 1840 and 1850, the counties bordering the canal increased in population 397%; those more fertile, but more remote, 190%. The tide of trade, which had been heretofore to New Orleans, was reversed and went east. The canal also facilitated and brought emigration from Ohio, New York, and New England, in the newly established counties in the northern two-thirds of the state. Foreign immigration was mostly from Ireland and Germany. Later, this great canal fell into disuse, and finally was abandoned, as railway mileage increased.
In the next ten years, by 1840, of the public domain 9,122,688 acres (14,250 mi²; 36,918 km²) had been sold. But the state was still heavily in debt, although growing rapidly. In 1851 a new constitution (now in force) was adopted. The first constitution was adopted at a convention assembled at Corydon, which had been the seat of government since December, 1813. The original statehouse, built of blue limestone, still stands; but in 1821, the site of the present capital, Indianapolis, was selected by the legislature. It was in the wilds, sixty miles from civilization. By 1910, it was a city of 225,000 inhabitants, and was the largest inland steam and electric railroad center in the United States that was not located on a navigable waterway. No railroad reached it before 1847.
| Historical populations | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Census | Pop. | %± | |
| 1800 |
—
|
||
| 1810 | 831.6% | ||
| 1820 | 500.2% | ||
| 1830 | 133.1% | ||
| 1840 | 99.9% | ||
| 1850 | 44.1% | ||
| 1860 | 36.6% | ||
| 1870 | 24.5% | ||
| 1880 | 17.7% | ||
| 1890 | 10.8% | ||
| 1900 | 14.8% | ||
| 1910 | 7.3% | ||
| 1920 | 8.5% | ||
| 1930 | 10.5% | ||
| 1940 | 5.8% | ||
| 1950 | 14.8% | ||
| 1960 | 18.5% | ||
| 1970 | |||
